240 RAPACITY OF SNOW-VULTURES. 



Snow- vultures are numerous in Kan-sii, and wc 

 often wondered how they could find sufficient food, 

 especially as the Mongols, Tangutans, and Chinese 

 often eat carrion themselves, and the vultures would 

 have but a small share of the dead domestic cattle. 

 In summer too, when the weather is rainy and the 

 mountains are often clothed in mists, it must be 

 extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to see the 

 prey from a distance, and it is probable that at this 

 season the vultures take very distant flights to coun- 

 tries where the atmosphere is clearer. A flight of a 

 few hundred miles is no exertion to this bird, which 

 sails all day long beneath the clouds almost without 

 flapping its wings. 



Such is their rapacity that notwithstanding their 

 habitual wanness they return to the carrion after 

 they have been sev"eral times fired at. Their tena- 

 city of life is almost incredible : my companion 

 and I once fired a dozen charges of slugs at a number 

 of them only fifty paces off, without killing one. 



They may be easily shot \vith ball, however, if 

 you will take up a position in ambush near some 

 exposed food ; but you must be careful to hide your- 

 self, and your best plan is to select a small cave, and 

 plant its entrance with bushes. The bait should be 

 carrion, or any offal laid on a freshly drawn hide, and 

 disposed about seventy paces from your place of 

 concealment, to enable you to move at your ease 

 without fear of starding the birds. It is of no use 

 stationing yourself before eight or nine o'clock in the 

 morniniL!^, Avhen t\\v. vultures leave their eyries, and 



